B-52s Over Korea… Protecting Our Homeland?

In response to a reported North Korean nuclear test, the US flew a B-52 over Korean territory. US military leaders claim we must confront North Korea to defend the US homeland. Meanwhile, Congress jumps into the game with more sanctions legislation on the Floor this week.

Ron Paul: Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report. With me today is Daniel McAdams and Daniel it’s good to see you.

Daniel McAdams: Happy Monday sir.

Ron Paul: Very nice. We want to talk today about North Korea. It’s been in the news. I sometimes wonder, we try to address current subjects, but when I think about it, why is North Korea a current subject? The headline of course, it’s been in the news, it says US flies bomber B52s over South Korea to show force. I think we’ve been doing this for a while and it is newsworthy obviously, because you wonder why they do it. Out efforts to do this, we have to ask questions why do we do this, are we doing this to intimidate the North Koreans, do they need this or are we basically insecure and we have to show that we are the big man on the block and nobody can ever defy us.

Anyway, we are doing it and we’ve done it and we protect South Korea and we’ve been doing it for a long while, but this whole issue of B52s I think it’s sort of interesting, because I was in high school in the 50s, in 1952 when the first B52s flew. We were very much involved in a war in Korea and later on when I was in the Air Force in the early 60s, one of my jobs was to fly in all the different airplanes to see what kind of conditions the pilots had to undergo, so I did take a flight in a B52, not over Korea or anything, but I flew in cargo planes over South Korea right up to the DMZ. I never saw them, but I was told one of our jobs in this transportation business and I was sort of an observer, were carry a nuclear weapon. We’ve been in this business for a long, long time.

I think it’s interesting to know what an American commander said about all this when North Korea detonated this bomb, of course this is what brought this all about and he said that we have to show our commitment to our allies, that is why we are doing this, commitment to our allies and to make sure that we defend our homeland. Explain to me exactly how this thinking goes, that what we are doing right now is defending our homeland.

Daniel McAdams: It’s a sort of an intellectual preemption because someday North Korea might be able to develop a missile that might be able to take a nuclear weapon, might be able to take it over the US or somewhere like that and so it’s a preemptive strike so to speak.

Ron Paul: You mean something like Saddam Hussein.

Daniel McAdams: That’s right.

Ron Paul: We had to worry about him too and he had been an ally of ours, but we still had to do something probably similar to danger that we are threatened by North Korea.

Daniel McAdams: Yeah and of course, the response as always is to do more of the same thing, you can expect different results. As you point out a show of force with B52s, stronger rhetoric and actually today on the floor of the US House they brought off the shelves an old sanctions bill that they wrote last year, just waiting for something like this to happen and they are going to take it to the floor and try to be relevant. They can’t put on any more sanctions because they’ve already sanctioned everything that moves in North Korea, so now it’s they are going to improve the enforcement of sanctions, it’s the bill HR 757 that they are going to go ahead and talk about today. Same old thing, same old thing.

Ron Paul: Right. That reminds me when they had a bill on the shelf for the consequence of 9/11 called the Patriot Act. It was sitting there and the opportunity present itself. You would think the American people would wake up when they hear that, they say is he telling the truth, let’s check it out, but no, that is past history, we are not going to worry about this. We’ve heard from Un and why he thought this should be done and it’s interesting, he is a nut, I think he has real problems and that does illicit concerns, but in some ways he is more logical than many people realize because when he explains why he’s doing this, doesn’t he come across with a bit of logic?

Daniel McAdams: It’s funny, as you say he certainly comes across as eccentric to say the least, but strangely enough North Korea’s foreign policy is more rational than Obama’s foreign policy, when you think about national interest. They feel threatened, the US, Japan and South Korea have all made threatening sounds for a number of years against North Korea and North Korea’s response to feeling threatened is to develop an effective deterrent, nuclear weapons in this case. Because they have these nuclear weapons, neither of these three countries that have been using strong rhetoric against North Korea will attack. They are not attacking their neighbors, they are not having regime change overseas. Not to defend North Korea, but it says a lot that their foreign policy is more rational than ours.

Ron Paul: Yes and the bigger question too is why do we have to be so involved and we have an American general that runs the South Korean army, they are in charge, so that we own them and our CIA caught them cheating on nuclear development, so here we are, we take care of them, you can’t do this and they are not allowed to have heavy weapons and North Korea says we are, we believe in sovereignty and that just feeds into this.

Out general said we have an ironclad commitment to defend South Korea. I imagine if we did a poll, most Americans would say that sounds ok, because in the old days it was the Soviets and the Chinese would march in and have a domino effect and take over the whole world. But, right now, it still exists and most Americans would say I guess so, but then again when I brought this up in campaigning I did get a lot of support, when I was very blunt about Korea and Europe and the Middle East, just bring the troops home, what are we doing spending billions and billions of dollars.

They do these exercises, military exercises every year and are getting ready to do another one in March, the practice of the invasion of North Korea. Just more fodder for Un, he can use. The amazing thing is in their tests when and if it becomes necessary, hopefully it never becomes, for them to do this operation they practice every year, in their own estimates it would cost 200,000 casualties of American troops.

Daniel McAdams: And you think America’s going to to for that. It’s incredible. Our good friend Eric Margulise, who’s on the board of the Institute and we’ve known for a number of years, he has a great article, Newt Rockwell carried it over the weekend, but he points out, you talk about out unshakeable commitment to our allies, but I think our allies in the region are actually slightly more reluctant than we would like to believe, because as Eric points out South Korea is not that crazy about reintegrating with North Korea.

Ron Paul: Right.

Daniel McAdams: Last thing they want is a few million hungry people coming over. Japan is concerned because it unified Korea, could pose an economic rival to Japan in the region and the last thing China wants is an implosion of the regime of the Kims and have all these millions of refugees pour over, so they are probably looking at these bombers flying over and a strong US rhetoric and probably wishing to themselves I wish they would tone it down a little.

Ron Paul: I would say they make no effort to come across as being consistent or at least their inconsistencies are totally ignored because of our media propaganda, but Margulies points out that since the non-proliferation treaty of 1963, guess who have violated that treaty since then. The United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

Daniel McAdams: Same old, same old.

Ron Paul: Not a word said about that. This guy who probably, like Saddam Hussein, they get targeted, but nothing much is said about the nuclear armaments of Israel and Pakistan and India and that it is a significant event and also the fact that our CIA watches everybody and like I mentioned they caught South Korea wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, as well as Taiwan, so it’s this inconsistency, what are we doing?

I think it’s our hegemony, our fortress and our empire that we have to protect that they will do and say anything necessary to protect that power, but they couldn’t do it if they didn’t have almost absolute control of the major media outlets in this country.

Daniel McAdams: Yeah, nobody is questioning it. What is funny about this resolution is they must have no sense of irony because when you down at the bill of particulars you can almost imagine that they are talking about the US. They complained that North Korea counterfeiting US currency, while the Fed is pretty good at that. They are operating and maintaining a system of brutal prison camps, well we kind of have done that too as Obama said we tortured some folks and they prioritize weapons programs over meeting the needs of their people. With over a trillion dollars military budget it can almost be said about us as well.

Ron Paul: Not only do we pay to keep our troops there, South Korea does not have to use any of their funds to defend their country, because they would have a right to defend their country as well. That is a hostile part of the world when you think of the Koreans and the Vietnamese and the Japanese and the Chinese, they weren’t always buddies throughout the system, they have been fighting for a long time.

Another thing that I question that not many people think about is maybe they don’t want to think about it, is this military commander, our military commander said that we had this ironclad commitment to defend South Korea. Yes, that since the war ended, of course it did end then there was an armistice in 1952, so the commitment is that whatever happens that we have to send our kids over there and our taxpayers will pay for. But, what moral right, what constitutional right, what practical right do they have to make this long-term commitment. How can they sign something in 1952 which is a virtual open declaration of war, because if tomorrow if troops moved in even after World War II, when the North Koreans moved troops to South Korea, the Congress didn’t have a declaration of war, so we had already sacrificed that principle.

Here it is, why is this generation, two or three generations ago, signing treaty that we feel obligated to do this, why don’t we wake up and say enough is enough, but I think once again the people are going to think in those terms, but when push comes to shove I think everything is economics, whether it’s militarism or migration or immigration problem we have is related to economics. I just think that if people looked at this more in a moral way, by what right does a country like ours have to commit a future generation to automatic war, especially when the Constitution tries to protect us against it.

Daniel McAdams: Yeah, exactly.

Ron Paul: Anyway, I would like to thank everybody for tuning it today to the Liberty Report, I know this subject seems a little bit esoteric and a not too many people are worrying about it, but it is in the news and we’d like to put this into perspective. We should put it in perspective with the concept of an non-interventionist foreign policy and as I say the end of our policy overseas will come for economic reasons just as they did with the Soviet system, but sometimes the unintended consequences are something that we cannot foresee and sometimes the blowback is very, very dangerous, so there is blowback by wild nuts and people who want to kill and they will use all kinds of things to exacerbate the concept of terrorism.

But someday I think the countries of the world are going to get sick and tired of our overbearing approach to tell everybody what to do, whether it’s financial or military or whatever and when they see the chance I think that they will have not exactly blowback, but they are going to be very pleased to help bring us down, so it’s about time we thought of what the principles are about liberty, what the limited form of government that we were given and what that means and what it would mean if we would practice what we preach.

Yes, we have a lot of good in America and we have a lot of good things that we have done. But, it is worthless thinking that military might can spread this goodness. I will tell you what, all that effort cancels out the goodness if we come down hard on people and say you do it our way or not only will we fly our B52s over you and you do what we way, that we will start bombing you and that we are currently in the business of bombing a lot of people with drone missiles and whatever and we have troops into many countries. Like I’ve said many times, it’s time to bring the troops home as soon as possible.

I want to thank everybody today for tuning in to the Liberty Report and please come back soon.

12:58 pm: "Actually, no. If you look at what caused the 2007 Economic Crisis it was not caused by the Federal Reserve nor by its monetary policies." - SnowBoarder SLC

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